Child Soldier
by Taineyah
Summary: Xavier doubts his wisdom in training the X-Men. Are they children or soldiers?


                This is a one shot I wrote in math class the other day, and I think it works pretty well.  It makes sense, at least.  It could have happened in pretty much any season, so it doesn't matter how much background you have with Evo, or any other X-Men Universe.

Disclaimer:  Only the concept is owned by Tainz.  All recognisable characters belong to Marvel comics and were probably invented by Stan Lee.

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Child Soldiers

by Taineyah Fyre Clawfoot

                It was one of those rare days of fall where beautiful, summery weather falls on a day where there's no school.  All of the mansion's younger inhabitants, from Jamie right on to Scott, were outside at the pool, enjoying the heat and sunshine of the Saturday afternoon.  Ororo was ou in the gardens with Hank, basking in one last day of the gardens' beauty before the cold came and shrivelled the plants.  Logan, as always, was off on his own somewhere.

                Of all the mansion's inhabitants, only Charles Xavier was attending to business.  He was going over the allowances that he gave to the children to see if he needed to increase them.  It was tedious work--each child had their own funding formula based on how much money and other necessities they received from their parents--but he liked to get it done before someone came into his study begging for a raise.

                After awhile, Xavier looked out his open window, to where he could see the children playing at the pool.  Their laughter and shrieks drifted in languidly on the warm breeze and he almost smiled.  For that one sunny moment, they seemed happy, carefree and like normal children.

                Then Xavier heard Jamie's voice, rising above the others.  The youngest, Jamie's voice hadn't lost the childish treble of prepubescence.  If one hadn't known Jamie when he'd first arrived at the Institute, they would have thought that he sounded like a little kid.  Xavier knew differently.

                Jamie's voice had another quality to it, one that no twelve year old should have.  It was a tone that begged the question, "Will my friends be here tomorrow?"  Jamie knew that his friends were soldiers, warriors defending hmanity. He was too young to understand it in full, but he'd participated in Danger Room sessions.  He knew that he and his friends were being trained to fight.  Because of the genetic blip that gave him an advanced x-gene, his young voice didn't possess that childish abandon that seemed to scream "forever" in his peers.

                Xavier sighed.  Was he wrong to train "his" children to do this?  None of them would ever have the happiness associated with ignorance.  They held no innocence, only responsibility.  Where other teenagers had parties, sleeping in and time at the mall, the Institute's children had only loneliness, training sessions and battles.

                How had the decision been make that they, out of all the people in the world would be given their special abilities?  The "gifts" that set them apart.  The powers that made them feared.  The "curses" that prevented some of them from ever having the option of leading a normal or average life.  It didn't seem fair.

                Xavier watched Rogeu dunk Kurt underwater.  Though he couldn't see it because of the distance and the fact that it was the same colour as her skin, Xavier knew that Rogue was wearing a nylon body stocking.  It covered her enitire body, except her hands, which were encased in gloves, from her neck to the tips of her toes.  Xavier could see the fur that stuck to Kurt's body in wet clumps.  How could either of them ever be considered "normal?"

                He thought of them as children because of their age, but they weren't.  They weren't children any more than Xavier himself, well past 50, was a child.  They were, for all intents and purposes, adults, regardless of their apparent youth.  Even little Jamie was grown-up, all illusions of forever irrevocably stripped away.

                Xavier jumped slightly at a noise behind him.  He hadn't been paying attention to the inside of the mansion, only the events taking place at the pool and the thoughts they induced in him.

                Xavier turned and Logan was standing there, wiping some oil off of his hands with a dirty rag.  "Whatcha thinking about, Chuck?"

                "Nothing, I suppose."  Xavier wasn't sure how to put his thoughts into words, even if he'd wanted to.

                "It don't look like nothing to me."  Logan stuffed the rag into his pocket.

                Xavier sighed, knowing that Logan expected some kind of an answer.  "Have you ever wondered if maybe these children shouldn't be here?"

                Logan looked a little confused.  "They're mutants.  They belong here.  Would you rather they were with the Morlocks or the Brotherhood, or even Magneto?"

                "No."

                "Then what's your problem?"  Logan shrugged a little as he spoke.

                "I'm not sure if they're children anymore or if I've made them nothing more than soldiers."  Xavier's brow furrowed in thought.

                Logan studied the children for a moment.  Jamie was clapping his hands, filling the pool and Bobby was making icefloes in it to try and freeze some of the Jamies out.  Amara, meanwhile, was trying to heat the pool up so Jamie wouldn't freeze to death.

                "Look like kids to me," Logan said, voice low.

                Xavier shook his head.  "I don't think so.  With everything they've been put through, they're more soldiers than children."

                Logan smirked.  "Look at Stripes."

                Xavier did as Logan requested, but saw nothing out of the ordinary.  "What about her?"

                "What's she doing?"

                Xavier stared at her intently for a second.  "It looks as though she's trying to drown Ray.  Are you saying we should go stop her?"  Knowing that Logan was trying to make a point on his own time, Xavier carefully refrained from using any vestige of telepathy.

                Logan rolled his eyes. "He'll be fine.  What else is she doing?"

                Worried, Xavier tried to see what else was wrong.  "She's swimming."

                Exhasperated, Logan snapped, "She's laughing."

                "Obviously.  What's your point."

                "Someone like her... with her powers, laughing.  Wouldn't you think she'd be hiding away somewhere?  Trying to escape from the people she might hurt?  Wouldn't you think that a teenager who couldn't have a real boyfriend would have probably even killed herself?"

                "I don't know...  I don't have the ability to see the future."

                "She was raised by someone who did.  If she'd been told when she were little that she'd be like this today..."

                "She found a few friends.  She's been accepted by a few people."

                "And she's laughing, Chuck.  Anywhere else in the world, she'd be hiding or dead, but here, she's not.  She's here, she's alive and with friends."

                "That still doesn't make her a child.  Soldiers have comrades.  She has far more to worry about than her grades and normal teenage problems."

                "She's not a normal teenager.  She never will be.  None of them can, at least until normals accept mutants.  Even then, some of them won't have "normal" lives.  Rogue can't touch, Jamie can't roughhouse, Scott can't look at the world without quartz glasses.  You can't pretend that's normal."

                "But does that make it right for me to train them the way I do?"

                "No."

                Xavier felt deflated by Logan's simple negative.  His worst fears had been confirmed.

                "Maybe I should just close down the school."

                "That's not what I meant."

                "It isn't?"

                "No.  What I meant was, you shouldn't train them just because they're different.  There are other reasons that make more sense."

                Xavier looked at Logan intently as Logan continued.

                "Someday, some of those kids'll be parents.  There's a pretty good chance their kids'll be mutants.  You need to train these kids so they can show the world that mutants are good guys, so their kids won't have to deal with the crap they deal with every day."

                "That isn't fair to them."

                "No. It ain't.  It's the way fate made stuff happen, though."

                Xavier thought that through quietly.  Logan took the Professor's silence to mean that Xavier still doubted his own wisdom.

                "Look at it this way.  Those kids aren't out wreaking havok on the world.  Half of them would be in big trouble, stealing and killing and stuff.  They'd be in jail or worse.  They aren't.  they're out there, swimming and laughing, and it's becausyou took them in and trained them to be the good guys."

                "That still doesn't make them children."

                "It doesn't.  But they are children, and it's only because you made them soldiers. You gave them back one piece of innocence they'd all lost from fear and abuse."

                "What's that?"

                "Every time they face off against someone and lose, you send them back until they win.  You taught them that, in the end, the good guys always win."

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Kind of a lame ending, I know, but it was the best way I could think of.

Love always (especially if you review),

Tainz


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